All the World’s a Stage

Sun, 07/29/2012 - 8:35am

The June Nose

By

Anonymous

“All the World’s a Stage,” the Bard once wrote. Never was this sage observation truer than in our fair metropolis this past month. Here, politics, in The Nose’s opinion, have veered from the comic to the tragic. One moment saw the famous “Mayor for Life” pontificating on the ethnicity of the nursing profession. Another witnessed the fallen scion of a long-standing political dynasty embarking on a four-year, all-paid vacation at Camp Fed.

Even The Nose, a satirist of no little competence, would find inventing the range of characters that stride across our city’s dais quite a challenge.

When the local broadsheet broke the news last year that the Gray campaign had made under-the-table payments to fringe candidate Sulaimon Brown, most DC insiders were perplexed. “What a waste of money! Why would they have bothered? Nobody could have been that stupid,” folks opined. Gray repeatedly denied any involvement or knowledge. To many, the notion on its face seemed absurd.

Now, Gray campaign strategists Howard “Cash Envelope” Brooks and Thomas “Tear It Up” Gore have both pled guilty to organizing a scam to support Brown’s quixotic mayoral quest with the understanding that he would continue to attack Fenty at debates. Their charging documents largely corroborate Sulaimon’s imaginative council testimony. They confirm in an especially ironic twist that the Gray organization was the largest contributor to Brown’s campaign.

The Nose has drawn several important lessons from Brooks and Gore’s travails:

If you are going to break the law, DO NOT write it down.

If you are foolish enough to scribble a record of your misdeeds in a spiral notebook, DO NOT rip it up.

If an FBI agent interviews you about your questionable actions and said spiral notebook, TELL THE TRUTH.

Never, never use money orders when you can pay in cash.

The Nose is honestly beginning to wonder if Gray’s 2010 campaign was run by the Keystone Cops. Even the Watergate burglars did better job covering their tracks.

In the nation’s capital, truth is truly stranger than fiction. This, Dear Readers, is the reason that The Nose has drawn much of his more arcane inspiration from the great works of musical theater.

And so, inspired by a recent trip to Arena Stage to see The Music Man, The Nose has penned this ditty:

Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of Politicians in your community.

Why sure I'm a voter,
Certainly mighty proud I say
I'm always mighty proud to say it.
I consider that the hours I spend
Watching District Cable are golden.
Help you cultivate horse sense
And a cool head and a keen eye.
Never take and try to give
An iron-clad leave to yourself
From a twenty-hour marathon hearing?

But just as I say,
It takes judgment, brains, and maturity to pull that lever
In a political game,
I say that any boob kin take
And check that box.
And they call that sloth.
The first big step on the road
To the depths of deg-ra-Day--
I say, first, small contributions from a developer,
Then free three-martini lunches.
An' the next thing ya know,
Your candidate is pitching for money
In a pinch-back suit.
And list'nin to some big out-a-town corporate magnate
Hearin' him tell about Internet gambling'.
Not a wholesome lottery, no!
But a Iphone App where they play blackjack in a library!

Make your blood boil?

Well, I should say.
Friends, lemme tell you what I mean.
Ya got one, two, three, four, five, six contributors in a bundle
Bundles that mark the diff'rence
Between a Bribe and a Contribution,
With a capital "C,"
And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for Politician!

Trouble, oh we got trouble,
Right here in Latté City!
With a capital "T"
That rhymes with "P"
And that stands for Politician,
We've surely got trouble!
Right here in Latté City,
Right here!
Gotta figger out a way
To keep the politicians moral BEFORE elections!
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble...

The District truly has become a theater of the absurd. Perhaps, it is now time for a new casting call.